The End is a series of related comics by Marvel Comics.
The comics are a series of Alternate Universe comics, sharing the thematic sense of following possible ending to various Marvel properties, varying anywhere from grim to optimistic.
Titles
- Fantastic Four The End
- Hulk: The End
- Iron Man The End
- Marvel: The End
- Spider Girl The End
- The Punisher: The End
- Wolverine The End
- X-Men: The End
- Captain America The End
- Captain Marvel: The End
- Deadpool The End
- Doctor Strange The End
- Miles Morales The End
- Venom: The End
The End provides examples of:
- After the End:
- In Hulk: The End, the Hulk is the last man on Earth, having survived for more than two centuries after nuclear war wiped out mankind.
- In Captain Marvel: The End, the Earth that Carol finds has been completely devastated.
- Miles Morales: The End is set decades after giant germs ravaged the Earth and killed most of humanity. An elderly Miles protects the safe haven of Brooklyn as its Mayor.
- Punisher: The End features World War III turning nuclear.
- Apocalypse How:
- Class 1-2 in Miles Morales: The End as the germs have killed most of humanity, but several safe communities such as Brooklyn remain.
- Class 4 in Hulk: The End. Humans nuked themselves off the planet. There's still other life though, including the predatory cockroaches.
- Class 5 in The Punisher: The End. Nuclear war killed all visible life outside of the specially made bunker.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: In X-Men: The End, an Older and Wiser Kitty Pryde (not the best ass-kicker in the X-Men, but still a good one) becomes President of the United States.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: In Venom: The End, the Lemony Narrator makes a joke about "God forbid the world ever had to do without Tony Stark, eh?" as they narrate how his Artificial Intelligences were among the many to survive into the twilight days of biological life. At first, this sounds like Self-Deprecation on Marvel's part... until the end of the story, when it is revealed that the narrator is an A.I. descended from Stark, and thus they were actually describing themselves.
- Cloning Gambit: In X-Men: The End, it's revealed that Sinister once created a clone from his original, baseline human DNA as part of a plan to take down Apocalypse (he needed a body without Apocalypse's genetic meddling). He spliced in some DNA from Cyclops, believing that the Summers genes would ensure awesome superpowers. He was right; the clone would grow up to be, ironically enough, Gambit.
- Death Is Cheap: In Marvel: The End, Thanos discovers that the universe is unraveling because of all the heroes coming back from death. He specifically blames things on Wonder Man, who was arguably the first resurrection in the Marvel Universe. Thanos then unmakes and remakes the universe, and states, "This time, dead is dead." Quite ironic in that Thanos himself has died some of the most times of any character, as he is literally in a relationship with Death.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Iron Man: The End is one of the only comics in the line NOT to involve the death of the hero or the end of the world. Instead, it features an aging Tony Stark giving the mantle of Iron Man to one of his employees, and after defeating the Ultra-Dynamo (an upgraded Crimson Dynamo), Tony lets his successor take over as the new Iron Man, and retires to be with his wife Bethany Cabe.
- Gainax Ending: After seventeen issues of wrapping up forty years' worth of loose ends and providing a conclusive ending to the story of the X-Men in a big battle royale, X-Men: The End randomly ends with several X-Men gaining godhood without any forewarning. Oh, and Kitty Pryde becoming President of the U.S. and giving a speech to the surviving X-Men, but this one is foreshadowed, with her narration having been present from the start.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Venom: The End has Venom's biological Hive Mind vs. the artificial super-intelligences (or "Team Biolife vs. Team Godmind"). Both sides are trying to preserve life, but one wants to do it by way of cloning and reproducing previous life, and the other wants to digitize everything. This also counts as Blue-and-Orange Morality for both sides.
- Lemony Narrator: Venom: The End is narrated by a glib being who is prone to Technobabble and presenting the events of the story in a sillier, more exaggerated way. This person is revealed to be a Tony Stark-descended artificial intelligence.
- Narrator All Along: Venom: The End ends by revealing that the story was being narrated by the leader of the Stark-based artificial intelligences, explaining the Technobabble and sarcasm-heavy narration.
- Phlebotinum Overload: Subverted in Marvel: The End when Thanos finds that the only way to win is to absorb the Heart of the Universe. It's noted and warned that this might happen, but he actually does manage to control it (although he gives it up later).
- People Farms: Venom: The End depicts a far-off future in which Venom, with access to the genetic abilities of everyone they ever bonded with (which through time travel is everything that has ever lived), builds "Meat Gardens" out of entire planets to birth armies of genetically engineered superhumans in his Hopeless War against machines for the fate of the universe.
- Self-Deprecation: Deadpool: The End has Multiple Endings. One of them is the Distinguished Competition ending, a Take That! toward DC Comics and their overly serious movies. Deadpool comments that the whole Deconstruction fad is getting old... but he himself is dressed just like Penance,
a much-reviled example of Marvel trying to reboot Speedball of all people into some grimdark edgelord. - Time Abyss: In Venom: The End, the Venom symbiote survives for trillions of years, long after all other bio-life has been wiped out by the Godminds.
